| The "Force Bill." |
On the 21st of the month (January), Mr. Wilkins, the chairman of the Judiciary committee of the Senate, reported from his committee the bill for the collection of the revenue. This bill provided for extending the jurisdiction of the Circuit Courts of the United States over all cases in law or equity arising under the revenue laws of the United States; for making all property taken or detained by any officer or person under authority of any law of the United States irrepleviable by any order or process of the tribunals of a Commonwealth; for effecting the removal of suits commenced in a Commonwealth court against any officer or person for any act done under the laws of the United States, or on account of any right, authority, or title claimed under those laws, to the Circuit Courts of the United States, by means of proof laid before the Circuit Court that the defendant had petitioned the Commonwealth court for the removal of the cause. The bill provided, further, for substituting for a copy of the record of the proceedings in the Commonwealth court, in case of the failure of that court to furnish a copy, an affidavit, or other evidence, as the circumstances of the case might require; for giving to the United States judges the power to grant writs of habeas corpus in all cases where persons were in confinement for acts done in pursuance of a law of the United States, or of an order, process, or decree of any United States court or judge; for empowering the United States marshals, under direction of the United States judges, to provide places of confinement for persons arrested or committed under the laws of the United States, where any Commonwealth should refuse the use of its jails for the confinement of such persons; for allowing the President to change the custom-house from one place in a collection district to another, and to require the duties to be paid in cash; and for empowering the President to use the land and naval forces for suppressing any resistance to the execution of the revenue laws too powerful to be overcome by the civil officers of the general Government.
It was a good, stiff measure, but it was constitutional at every point, and it was demanded by the exigencies of the situation. It was a complete answer to the Replevin Act of South Carolina, and it would inevitably throw the responsibility for committing the first act of violence upon the Commonwealth in any resistance to the collection of the duties. It pricked the bubble completely of South Carolina's proposed legal resistance to the execution of the laws of the United States.
Of course the bill was denounced at once by the South Carolinians as a "Force Bill." Calhoun attacked it as a measure for coercing a sovereign "State," and offered a series of "States' rights" propositions, which he declared to be indisputable, and which must, therefore, prevent the passage of the bill. The discussion upon these resolutions, and upon the bill which they were meant to destroy, dragged on from day to day in the Senate, while that upon the Verplanck bill in the House proceeded even more slowly.
| The postponement of the execution of nullification. |
The chiefs of the nullifiers, professing to feel that the Government was yielding, reassembled in convention in the last days of January, and postponed the execution of their Ordinance until the end of the existing Congressional session.
On February 8th, Mr. Bell, the chairman of the Judiciary committee of the House of Representatives, reported to that body that his committee did not recommend vesting the President with any further powers for the execution of the revenue laws than those already possessed by him, and that they could not approve of the employment of military force for the purpose.
| The Compromise Tariff. |